tommallett

Monday:

What a boring way to start the week! I had never driven a Vauxhall Astra before and I suspect it might have been better to start off with a Nurburgring edition to get the juices flowing. This one was a little 1.4 and was, I think, the slowest car I have ever driven. It is not always a bad thing to drive the base model of a range as they often represent a sweet spot. Sadly, in the Astra this only exposes lack of engagement through the steering and chassis. It may not be a terrible car, but it must be better than this to challenge the established class leaders.

Tuesday:

I got excited by the idea of a quick 1 Series when the car came out, and despite some very fast variants of the junior BMW, it is only now that BMW’s M division have turned their hands to it. It is easy to make comparisons to the original M3 but it is a very different car to that. It has the 3 litre turbocharged straight 6 out of the Z4 35is, so it has buckets of low down torque and it actually quite aurally refined. However, the suspension is very hard, and it hops and skips across the bumps that prevail on British B roads. It is good fun and reasonable value at £39,990 but I would prefer it to have slightly softer suspension and an engine that revs harder.

Wednesday:

I now know where they got the suspension settings for the 1 Series M Coupe. It turns out that BMW just transferred them across from the M3 GTS. The GTS is an exciting car though and the engine is a peach. It ‘only’ produces 444bhp but it feels quicker and breathes better than the standard 414bhp unit while sounding magnificent. As a hooligan to unleash on a track, or somewhere to unleash a ‘dab of oppo’ it is great, but it is way too harsh for normal road use. The final question pertains to its price and at nearly £120,000 it has some very talented competitors. I think I’d find it difficult not to have a 997 GT3 parked on the drive with some change.

Thursday:

The surprise of the week is the Maserati Gran Turismo MC Stradale. What a fabulous car. Like an E46 M3 CSL or its namesake the Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale it doesn’t hammer the base car into submission with numbers but is more than the sum of its parts. The gearbox is still not a double clutch unit but is very swift and smooth nonetheless and the exhaust note is fabulous. The Maserati is a big car but it shrinks around you when pressing on and for me is just about usable on a daily basis. It is an interesting car for similar money to the M3 GTS and I think I’d have one of these.

Friday:

Since the original VW Golf GTI the idea of a small, well built but fast hatchback has been very appealing. As with most things the latest MK6 Golf is not small anymore but it is much faster than the original thanks to 265bhp and 4 wheel drive. It is incredibly complete as a car, it has very safe handling and plenty of power. But it lacks excitement, as a DSG with all that grip it is simply too uninvolving for me at safe and legal speeds. It may be very good objectively but I’d have a manual GTI any day of the week.